So, I've been driving around Seattle for a few days now. Mostly to find decent food outlets that sell food that isn't "fast". Something that has surprised me is the driving style of the local motorists here.

Firstly, on the express way, everyone does about 10 mph above the speed limit. In fact, if you stick to the 60 mph limit, you'll most probably get honked a few times and become somewhat of an annoyance to other motorists (even though there's 5 lanes to choose from).  Having said this though, I haven't come across many drivers that are excessively speeding on the express way, most vehicles are all doing the average 70 mph. In Oz, there's always a decent number of motorists that are "flying" down the expressway.

Secondly, on the suburban streets, there's not many speed signs. I think the suburban "main" street limit is 35 mph (similar to our 60 kph) and the residential streets 25 mph (similar to our 50 kph). Anyhoo, what I've noticed is extreme caution on behalf of nearly every driver. I stop at a stop sign and the vehicles I'm supposed to be giving way to just sit there and either wait for me or wave me on. It's actually quite frustrating because quite often you get stuck in this "unspoken" deadlock.

"You go."

"No, you go"

"No, I insist, you go"

… and so on.

Thirdly, I've done a little bit of pedestrian travel and have found that as soon as one of my feet hits the roadway all cars in the vicinity stop dead in their tracks and wait for me to cross. Now most of the time I'm not intending on crossing. I may have just stepped onto the road to allow another pedestrian to pass etc. Strange. 

Anyway, these are just some of the vexing vehicular events that I've experienced. It's not what I expected.

Anyhoo, back to work.

So, here I am in the city of Seattle. My first couple of days here have actually been rather "Sleepless". The flight over wasn't the most pleasant. I was sitting in the window seat next to a rather large lady who slept like a dying whale thrashing around all over the place.

Anyhoo, my hotel room is quite nice (see below). It's got a decent work area with a desk and office chair and the high speed internet connection is good. I'm staying at the Courtyard Marriott Southercenter. It's aimed at long stay business travelers and is very nice.

The picture on the left isn't the best angle but you can see I've got a decent amount of room to work.

Cable TV over here is just as boring as it is in Australia, although I've been watching this cool show called "The Worlds Dirtiest Jobs" in which the presenter travels the U.S. looking in search of the dirtiest jobs and then spends a day doing whatever it is the job entails. This morning's episode had him working with a pest extermination crew de-infesting a house that was absolutely swarming with German Cockroaches.

Another thing I've noticed here is that everything is big. I walked in to 7-Eleven this morning go buy some Bananas (yes that's right, 7-Eleven have a fruit section) and I passed a couple exiting with absolutely enormous slurpies. No, not one between 2 but 1 each! They were huge. A conservative estimate would put them at around 3 litres, however, they may have been bigger. 3 litres!!! That's ridiculous. No wonder diabetes is on the rise, it should be a crime to sell a sugar drink that large. No wonder every second corner has a dentist and every other corner has a doctor. They must be busy.

I drove into the city last night and went for a little walk. It's actually quite a small CBD area maybe about the same size as Adelaide.

It's a nice little city. I went and had a brief look at the "Space Needle". The whole area surrounding it struck me as a left over from some 70's "big idea" that the local council is trying to keep alive even though it's had it's day. However, there is a Science Fiction museum just below it that might be interesting. 

Anyway, there's not too much else to say so I'll leave it there. 

Whilst I’m not what you’d call a professional travel photographer or even a highly experienced travel photographer, I’ve had a reasonable amount of experience taking photos in the field over the past 4-5 years with various Nikon SLRs. The reason I’m writing this series of travel photography tips is to share my personal experience and the lessons I’ve learned whilst attempting the art of travel photography. I do not presume to be an expert and am definately not well known, but I have noticed a shortage of photography tips specific to all aspects of travel photography on the web and would like to help fill that gap.

My first post tackles the “what do I need?” question regarding equipment. We all know that sometimes we can get carried away and go out and purchase more than we need only to end up with an expensive toy that ends up sitting on the shelf collecting dust, or in the case of travel photography, you end up lugging around a 1kg lens through the tropical jungles of the Amazon for 6 weeks and never use it!

1. What do I need & What do I want?
It is important to seperate your equipment list into two categories being: what do I need? And, what do I want? So, in my opinion, the biggest tip I can offer you and one that I will expand upon later in this post: “Take only what is needed to be versatile in the field”. More on this later…

1.1 Be fast & flexible
Firstly, you need to determine the bare minimum. How little can you take without sacrificing the ability to be fast and flexible? Read the rest of this entry »

Waiting out the Day

Due to popular demand I’m posting a colour version of “Waiting out the Day”. I’ve had a number of emails requesting this for various reasons. So. Here it is.

Also, I’m nearly finished the first post in the “Travel Photography Tips” series I’m putting together based on my limited but eye opening experience in the world of travel photography. It should be posted within the next day or so.

I’m entering a few travel photography competitions over the next few weeks and I’m finding it hard to decide which photos to use, so, I thought I’d put it to public vote

Please, if you have even 5 minutes to spare, click on this link. A new browser window will open with my “China 2006″ collection displayed in it.

If you could take a few minutes to browse through the photos and then add a comment to this post stating which photos you think have the most merit, I would be very appreciative. Each photo has a title… just quote that in your comments on this post.

For those of you that are interested I’ll also be posting some “Travel Photography Tips” over the coming days and weeks so stay tuned.

Yangshou from Dragon Bridge

I’ve finally started working on my photos from China. I’m entering a few of them in some competitions which close in a few weeks so I’ve had to get a move on.

The greatly reduced in size album of “China Photos” can be viewed here. They’re split in to places again but all up theres under 50 shots. They’re the final “premium” colllection if you will

I’m pretty happy with my first “major” attempt at travel photography. I definately learnt alot about what’s good to shoot and what’s not, but I think all in all, the best shots are the ones with people (locals) in them. They are random, they have character and they are always different.

Anyhoo, I’ll be posting some tips on travel photography soon, as well as information about the competitions I’m entering.

P.S. the attached panorama was taken in the Yangshou area. I like it because it gives the viewer an idea of just how many of those “kasts” there are scattered as far as the eye can see.

Danish Karaoke

By popular request, I present to you the next video in the China installment. “Danish Karaoke”.

This is actually quite a funny video. The song the girls are singing is “Big Big World” by Emilia. It was released in the early 90s and I’d never heard of it before. But somehow, somewhere the Danish girls knew it and so they sang it. I’ll let you be the judge of how well they did

Translation:
Indeværende er ligefrem en hel sjov video. Den sang den piger er sang er ” stor Stor Jord ” af Emilia. Den var løst i den snarlig 90s og I’d aldrig nogen sinde hørt i sig i nærværelse af. Men other , et eller andet sted den Dansk piger kendte sig hvorfor de sang sig. Jeg vil lade jer være den pÃ¥dømme i hvor nÃ¥ de gjorde

This video uses QuickTime 7.0 so if you don’t have it, you’ll need to get it from here.

Download Low Quality 360×288 - 8.2Mb

Download High Quality 720×576 - 137Mb

Yangshou by satellite

I thought this was pretty cool.  The picture on the right is Yangshou by satellite.  You can see the limestone casts very clearly, especially when compared to the more generic mountain ranges to the top right of the photo.

That’s all I had to say for now

The Crew in Hong Kong

Well I’ve spent most of today putting together a little video in honour of all those who Sue and I travelled with through China. I’m planning to put together a few other videos over the next few weeks that are more aimed at displaying what we did on the trip rather than who we did it with.

The music in the “Meet The Crew” clip was pulled off the Animatrix soundtrack. It’s called “Beauty Never Fades”. I haven’t paid too much attention to the words, but I like the sound of the track. The aim of the video is to be a “memory” of the people and the experiences we had. I think the music fits this.

I’ve made a low and high quality version of the movie but I’ve only posted the low quality version. (It’s still 25Mb). Please note: You will need QuickTime 7.0 to play this movie. If you don’t have it you can download it for free at Apple’s QuickTime site.
So, for those of you that choose to download the “Meet The Crew” video, enjoy

Download Low Quality (QuickTime 7.0) 320×288 - 25.5Mb

Download High Quality (QuickTime 7.0) 720×576 - 206Mb

Local Food on Temple Street, Hong Kong

Well we’re back in Hong Kong and the trip is almost over. We went out tonight for a “last dinner” on Temple Street and were served a selection of Cantonese style dishes which included a few of the local seafood specialities.

Everyone is pretty tired and we’re all looking forward to going home but at the same time don’t want to leave.  I know Sue is looking forward to the roast dinner Mum is going to cook for us on Friday night

After dinner we went out for a short while to a local Karaoke bar and had a bit of a sing-a-long.  I’ll post some of the video footage for this when we get back to Oz.  It was quite funny, especially when the danish girls got up and sang a song in english that none of us had ever heard before!